Ensemble: ‘The Social Network’

Hollywood Award honoree

Ensemble

“The Social Network”

For the cast of “The Social Network,” three weeks of rehearsal before filming and then doing “the first 20 to 25 takes” daily as rehearsal were extraordinary pluses.

“If something good came out of it, we would still do it again,” Justin Timberlake says of director David Fincher’s method. “To have the freedom to go in and mess it up for 97 takes, and when you get to 98 it’s good and David says, ‘We’re moving on,’ was really satisfying. It was freeing, like you were running wind sprints that turned into a marathon.”

Armie Hammer, who plays both Winklevoss twins, can’t recall the most takes he ever did: “It’s the kind of thing you block out psychologically so you can kind of get through the day. I do remember there was one day of 46 takes before Fincher said, ‘Cut, print, take that one, erase all the ones before it. Shoot it again.’?”

Jesse Eisenberg’s remembers exactly how many takes he did of the film’s opening scene, which contains nine pages of dialogue that ran four and a half minutes: “We performed that opening scene 99 times. David refused to do it an extra time to get an even 100. It was shot on the third day, after the first two nights to experiment with the character.”

Not that Eisenberg would have it any other way: “Every actor I know would stay there all day if there was more film in the camera, as opposed to staying in the trailer. We were all thrilled to be actually acting rather than sitting around waiting to act.”